Yihan Shi Along the River: a Family Story (30m 58s / 2017 / subtitles)
The Yangtze River. Over millennia, the fertile land around it formed through the movement and depositing of alluvial silt. The artists great-grandparents moved onto the fertile land and built a house there in the 1930s. Over eighty years, the house witnessed the lives of the family and the social-historical changes happening in the village. Many changes took place in China, some family members went peacefully through the difficulties, and some were deeply affected. Although living in the same house, each person has their own experience and feelings. In the film, five different stories are chronicled, representing details of individuals’ lives during historic times. Families members talk directly to camera, and through recording and representing their stories, subtle connections are drawn between the stories.

Laura Alhach Remembering the Taste of Avocados (12m 48 / 2017 / subtitles)
Remembering the Taste of Avocados recalls the memory of the displacement of the Macayepans in Colombia after armed conflict with guerrillas, paramilitaries and the army. The story takes place during the year of the signing of the Peace Treaty in 2016, and is told through the eyes of the villagers, as witnesses of the violence. The harvest of the avocados and the reconstruction of their homes after the conflict became a central theme that helped reconcile them.

Therese Henningsen Slow Delay (17 mins / 2018)
You’ve got something I want. All good comes to he who waits. I always wait… Nothing ever comes my way. My nephew, he’s a millionaire. My sister’s husband’s a millionaire. My other nephew, he’s a millionaire. And my cousin, she’s a millionaire. You know, just because we get older we don’t stop wanting those things.

Camilo Restrepo Cilaos, 2017 (12m 48 / 2017 / subtitles)
To keep a promise made to her dying mother, a young woman goes off in search of her father, a womaniser she has never met. Along the way, she learns that he is dead. But that doesn’t change her plans, she still intends to find him. Driven by the spell-binding rhythm of the maloya, a ritual chant from Reunion Island, Cilaos explores the deep and murky ties that bind the dead and the living.

Restrepo’s drive to make Cilaos came from an encounter with the Reunionese singer Christine Salem. The stories about Reunion Island that Salem told echoed the South American stories and legends of the artist-filmmaker’s own childhood. These two geographically distant regions of the world share a common colonial past, and the myths, beliefs and rhythms of the African peoples who were transported to each place.

Andrea Luka Zimmerman Civil Rites (27m 56 / 2017)Civil Rites responds to Martin Luther King’s 1967 speech, made on receipt of an honorary doctorate from the University of Newcastle, to explore how racism, poverty and war continue to haunt our lives. The film visits some of the key locations in Newcastle’s history of civil resistance. Some sites have been buried beneath car parks and shopping malls. Others remain on busy streets. Some are publicly marked, others anonymous. Underlying and uniting the range of voices and sites is the ever-present sound of the sea, suggestive of the ‘tide’ in human affairs and the perennial possibilities of a ‘sea change’ in the social order. It also reminds us of the city’s geographical location, industrial history and of the ocean that both divides and joins the American and European continents, the ocean of colonisation, empire and of course slavery, over which King travelled to Newcastle.

Civil Rites was commissioned by Tyneside Cinema.

Visit the Cinema at any point during the times listed above. Certificate 15.

Curated by Gareth Evans

*except Sun 3rd when there is an extra screening at 16:00, and Tue 5th when there will only be two screenings, at 10:00 and 12:00